LA Artist Proposes Floating Park Above The Highway

Why not make a forest above the highway? That’s what the LA-based artist Stephen Glassman must have thought when he took the initiative for the Urban Air project. He wants to transform the space above the highway that’s normally used for advertising into a bamboo forest in the sky.

The plans are not being executed but are seem to be interesting enough for many people to support the plans on Kickstarter. Since the idea was presented, 52,000 dollar has been already pledged on the crowd-funding platform. To realize this piece of floating forest, Glassman needs 100,000 dollar by December 11th. This money will be used to create the installation and fill it with bamboo.

According to the video he made, the artist seems to take his project very seriously, although I would consider it to be more some kind of joke. For car drivers it will be an interesting experience, sure. But for the rest I can’t find any good reasons to propose a forest on a highly complicated spot like this one. Although I understand the point of changing advertising space into ‘nature’.

In the way it is set up the project shows some similarities with Justus Bruns’ Times Square Art Square, a project in which Bruns tries to buy all the advertisement space on Times Square in order change it into art. Also Bruns uses crowd-funding to turn his ambition into reality. A new type of art projects can be defined here, where the artist plays the role of a rebellious inspirator. Doing so he or she raises money to make an argument against our current economic system. The method (crowd-funding in this case) is an important part of the project itself, while the final result is completely absurd from an artistic and esthetic point of view — the whole idea is too ridiculous for most other forms of financing, except for crowd-funding. The process, however, is transparent and an important part of the art project itself. The artist in fact creates an inspiring process, and the medium is the message. Only seven days to go for the additional 48,000…

With the Conflux Festival recently taking place in New York City, and the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art currently happening here in Toronto, I can’t help but note the incredible rise in popularity that location-based performance art and psychogeographic art interventions have enjoyed over the last decade. I’m also reminded of the first project…

Each person encounters between 3,000 and 6,000 commercial messages each day. Compared to art, that is a lot. I takes a real exhibition junk to even come close. That is perhaps why so many artists try to change this negative art/ad balance in public spaces. We have seen great examples. Dutch designer Justus Bruns tries…

We’re pretty overwhelmed here by the amazing support we’ve received in the first days of the Pop-Up City book crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter. We’re very happy and grateful to see that so many people want us to publish the book! It was a real treat to see the first 12 hours get us past $1,000 with ease — and then hitting 15% of our funding goal by the end of first day. Now, right at the moment that we send out this first update, we have reached over 25% of our final goal of $10,000. More than 50 wonderful people have helped us to get to this point.

Anyone could point out several factors that make up a city. In a quick glance, it’s easy to see the layers of pollution, vehicles rushing by, statues that hark to another era of local history, buildings being built up and other ones being torn down. But where did the city come from? All those buildings are made out of something. And what about time? How has the literal influence of time changed the landscape, health and aesthetic of the city? In Smudge Studio’sGeologic City: A Field Guide to the GeoArchitecture of New York, the guide visits twenty sites in New York City that identify geologic material and consider their relationship with the space they inhabit and once inhabited. The examples takes readers all over New York City and the world — sometimes even the galaxy — and the guide provides an interpretation the human connection to this geologic material or process. Smudge Studio follows the Dutch scientist Paul Crutzen’s idea that the modern human impact on the planet is so massive that is is “geologic in scale” and worth of its own era, the Anthropoecene.